August 8, 2014 — A federal court judge has questioned whether the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is doing enough to protect salmon and halibut from trawlers whose massive nets strip mine the ocean off the Gulf of Alaska coast.
District Court Judge H. Russel Holland's opinion comes in the wake of a decision by the agency that led to a significant cut in the number of independent observers tracking salmon and halibut bycatch on Gulf trawlers. NOAA, which oversees the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, two years ago went along with a North Pacific council plan that ended up halving the number of people monitoring the trawl fisheries.
Trawlers are 100- to 250-foot-long fishing vessels that drag large nets to catch tons of pollock, Pacifc Ocean perch and other species. They operate with bycatch limits designed to force closures if too many salmon or halibut are caught. Lacking observers to track bycatch, there is nothing to stop trawl skippers from rolling salmon and halibut overboard and pretending like they were never caught in order to ensure fisheries remain open.
Most trawl-caught fish dumped back into the sea die.
When observer coverage fell from about 30 percent of the trawl fleet to less than 20 percent because of program changes, a group called The Boat Company sued NOAA. The Boat Company is a Southeast Alaska-based nonprofit funded by sport fishing and eco-tourism interests that wants to clean up the Gulf fisheries.
Read the full story at Alaska Dispatch News